Commercialization versus open science: Making sense of the message(s) in the bottle

Abstract

Efforts to improve research outcomes have resulted in genomic researchers being confronted with complex and seemingly contradictory instructions about how to perform their tasks. For example, increasing pressure to commercialise (academic) research is paralleled by pressure to collaborate, share data, and disseminate knowledge quickly so as to encourage scientific progress, maximise research impact, and meet humanitarian goals. This article briefly explores some of the relevant instructions in Canada and the United Kingdom and concludes that commercialisation and more open collaborative practices are not necessarily irreconcilable. They should be viewed as complementary elements of an innovation framework for which more evidence must be gathered with respect to the impact of this coexistence. © 2012 The Author(s).